It has been my honor to represent the people of California's 17th district. I have worked across the aisle to build an economy that works for all Americans. I have done so while remaining an active voice on local issues.

I have passed laws making it easier for veterans to get apprenticeships and modernizing federal websites. To make sure our children have the skills to compete in a global economy, I co-sponsored legislation to make public universities and community colleges debt free. I have also brought new jobs and internships for our residents.

I have fought for equal pay for women, Medicare for All, reducing our foreign military entanglements, and comprehensive immigration reform. I have introduced legislation to double the earned income tax credit for working families and passed a resolution to end the Yemen war.

Locally, I have hosted monthly town halls in the district. To combat air noise from local airports, I established a roundtable with local leaders and FAA officials committed to finding a solution. To reduce traffic congestion, I have advocated for federal funding for the expansion of BART into San Jose and Santa Clara. Finally, to reduce the rising levels of anxiety among our students, I partnered with local school districts to raise awareness for youth mental health.

I have never taken campaign contributions from PACs, lobbyists or corporations. To learn more, please visit www.rokhanna.com

After two decades in Silicon Valley, Indian American engineer and businessman Ritesh Tandon is running for Congress in the South Bay.  He has built a successful career in technology at the same time that he has been a leader in helping others through his work with nonprofits.

Tandon says, "Over two decades ago, I immigrated to this country as a student searching for the American Dream. I found it here in the heart of our Bay Area, while studying for my MS and MBA at Santa Clara University. I believe this community is the greatest in our nation and it angers me to see the Washington D.C. elite ignore our values of strong family devotion and hard work. It will be my top priority to represent you, not entrenched party bosses."

“As a former President of a non-profit, I see how many Bay Area families are struggling to make ends meet. As a father, I know the $23-trillion national debt is stealing our children’s future. As an independent small businessman, I understand the crushing burden of job-killing regulations.”

Professionally, Ritesh Tandon worked on unified communications products for Cisco, first in engineering, then technical marketing.  Then he managed strategic alliances for Jabra, which makes wireless headphones.  He and his wife founded their own startup, which will develop and market hardware devices.

At the same time Ritesh served as an executive committee member of the Sankara Eye Foundation, which has established nine hospitals in India to eradicate curable blindness.  He raised millions of dollars for the hospitals and helped select the site for one of them.  He also served as a volunteer and then president for five years of UPMA, an organization which supports education and childcare of poor kids in India.

Ritesh Tandon is running in District 17, which includes Newark, Fremont, Milpitas, North San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and Cupertino (see the map).  He is challenging incumbent Ro Khanna, who is serving as a national co-chair of Bernie Sanders' campaign.

The grandson of a freedom fighter for Indian independence, Ritesh Tandon grew up in northern India and earned a B.S. degree in engineering at L. D. College of Engineering, where he also captained the cricket team.  After coming to the United States, he earned an M.S. in computer engineering and an MBA at Santa Clara University, where he also met and married Zurica Dhar, a fellow computer engineer.  They have two children and live in San Jose.

You can find out more about Ritesh on his campaign website, tandonforcongress.com.

Over two decades ago, I immigrated to this country as a student searching for the American Dream. I found it here in the heart of our Bay Area. I believe this community is the greatest in our nation and it angers me to see the Washington D.C. elite ignore our values of strong family devotion and hard work. It will be my top priority to represent you, not entrenched party bosses.

As a former President of a non-profit, I see how many Bay Area families are struggling to make ends meet. As a father, I know the $23-trillion national debt is stealing our children’s future. As an independent small businessman, I understand the crushing burden of job-killing regulations.

You can count on me to champion smart and efficient health care that will alleviate the financial strain on working class families. I also support immigration policies that protect us, while expediting the process for law-abiding residents that contribute to our economy. We must also have real education reform that gives our students more choices in school and in the workforce.

I am running for Congress because I am grateful for all this community has given me and I want to serve you. Let’s work together, reject partisan politics and find common sense solutions to ease the burden on all Bay Area families.

I’m thankful for the love and support of my wife of 19 years, Zurica.  I would appreciate your vote.

Joe Dehn is a resident of Sunnyvale. He was born in New York, graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has worked in the computer industry, and lived in Connecticut, Oregon, and Colorado before moving to California in 1993.

He has been a member of the Libertarian Party for 35 years and has run for public office several times previously. He served as a member of the Libertarian National Committee for many years, including two terms as National Secretary. He created the Libertarian Party's web site, the first of any political party, in 1994. He is currently the County Chair for Santa Clara County as well as a member of various committees at the state and national level.

He is running for Congress this year to offer a radically different alternative to the failed policies of the Republicans and Democrats. Under both of those parties the government has grown to monstrous proportions, come to dominate every aspect of American life, and continues to meddle in the affairs of other nations — none of which are good for us as citizens or taxpayers. He proposes the exact opposite platform: drastic cuts in the size of the federal government and taxes; ending U.S. military involvement in disputes between and within other countries, and an end to all the domestic "wars" as well, including the war on drugs, the war on guns, and the war on immigrants.

Outside of politics, his main activities relate to square dancing¹. He is a caller/instructor for several local clubs, has been named a "Top Ten Caller" several times by the Santa Clara Valley Square Dancers Association, and is active in several committees of CALLERLAB, the International Association of Square Dance Callers. He enjoys dancing all programs of modern square dancing from Basic through C-4, and also volunteers as an officer of several square dance organizations and serves as webmaster for the California Square Dance Council.

¹If you have no idea what this paragraph is about, because you have never heard of square dancing, or because you only did it once in fifth grade or only saw it in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, see https://www.squaredance.org/learn for an explanation.

"That government is best which governs least."

Thomas Jefferson may or may not have actually said those words, but many of the founders of this country held basically this view. And as a result, the U.S. Constitution was set up with a very limited sort of federal government in mind, with enumerated powers, and with a Bill of Rights that explicitly prohibited the government from interfering in various aspects of people's lives.

Unfortunately, that libertarian heritage of our nation's founders has been mostly forgotten by most politicians of today. Over the generations, government has grown and grown to control a larger and larger part of our economy, and to infringe the rights of citizens to a degree that would have been unimaginable by the founders.

My view is that it is the responsibility of the members of the U.S. Congress to follow both the letter of the Constitution and, even more important, the spirit behind it. There are many functions that the federal government has taken on that are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution -- these should be dismantled and turned over to the private sector. The government today is also infringing in many ways the rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights -- those laws must be repealed.

But just because something is mentioned as within the power of Congress to provide, that's not necessarily a good reason to do things that way. Advances in technology have made new ways of doing things possible (e.g., with respect to communication and banking). Advances in the science of economics, as well as the sad experience of other nations, have shown why socialism and central planning are ineffective ways to manage a society. Just because the founders thought something logically should be provided by government (e.g., a postal service) doesn't mean we need to limit our thinking in the same way.

In summary, every aspect of what government does needs to be limited. Departments that never should have existed in the first place should be abolished. Federal employment should be reduced. Laws and agencies that violate individual rights should be repealed and eliminated. And along with all that, various taxes that now burden the people of this country can and should be limited, cut, and repealed.